Aggregators & RSS

Many blogs and websites are updated on a regular basis. If you get much news or reading material from the web, sorting through sites becomes a chore. It can be hard to keep track of what you’ve read and where.

News aggregating or RSS feeds address this problem. If you subscribe to a site with an RSS feed — identified by either rss or xml — up-to-date content is sent directly to you.

How do I do that?

You can aggregate on your home or school computer using a news reader. There are many such programs, for both mac and windows machines. The ones below are free.

NetNewsWire (Mac, free lite version)
Amphetadesk (Windows, Linux, Mac, free)
FeedReader (Windows, free)
Top 10 Windows News Aggregators
Bloglines. Recommended by Bill Wend. Once you’ve established a free account by registering, access your personal aggregator from any machine connected to the internet.

Safari, Apple’s web browser also gives you the ability to aggregate RSS sites in as Bookmarks.

Most newsreaders, when installed on your computer, will automatically grab the appropriate URL once you select the RSS button. If not, after you have installed your news aggregator, subscribe to sites that interest you by clicking on the rss or xml button. This takes you to the feed site. Copy the address (URL) of that page into your newsreader. (Alternatively, “right click” on either button and “Copy Link Location.” Copy and paste the resulting link into your newsreader.)

The newsreader will begin to check sites periodically and display headlines of new activity.

Give aggregating a try. You’ll enjoy the efficiency it brings to web reading. If you want more detail than this, try here: www.whatisrss.com or just google RSS.